When Kapaa High School students return from fall break Monday, they will be greeted by a new sign fronting the school’s administration building.
Sam “Sam I Am” Sapien, a Boy Scout from Troop 105 sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, spent part of his fall break working on and installing the new sign as his Boy Scouts of America Eagle Scout project.
“I don’t know,” Sapien said. “One day, my stepdad, Dwayne Belmodis, and I were just sitting in the parking lot thinking about what to do for an Eagle project. He said, ‘I don’t know if this is an Eagle project, but that sign needs to be replaced. It’s full of termites.’”
That sparked Sapien into action, spending more than 115 hours researching, coordinating with school officials and preparing to get underway with creating the replacement sign. During that time, the sign had been removed due to rot and termites.
“That was about a year ago,” the Kapaa 11th-grader said. “It took a really long time to get this done. This will be great for the school since we haven’t had a sign for a while due to the deterioration and removal of the old sign. The school changed principals and we had to start the process all over.”
Melinda Belmodis, Sam’s mother, said it was very frustrating for the young man.
“He wrote letters of solicitation for funding to several of the local businesses,” she said. “No one responded. Can you imagine how excited he was when you answered his email? He was frustrated and finally set up a GoFundMe account to raise funds for the project. The money started coming in — slowly — but in the end, he had enough — almost to the penny — to get the project going.”
Sapien estimated the cost for the project to be around $400, excluding labor.
“Colby Barth — he works in the construction industry — spent three hours just routing the wood,” Sapien said. “And then, we had to do the painting. Ten coats each on two separate times with the white and green paints. It had to be durable. That took a lot of time.”
Melinda Belmodis said while all of this was taking place, Dwayne Belmodis and Sapien embarked on preparing the site for the new sign.
“That portion took more than five hours,” Sapien said, fishing out photos on his smartphone of the before-and-after.
“We had to power wash the foundation to get rid of the mold and grime build-up. Then we had to repaint the entire thing while taking into account the new landscaping that would enhance the final installation.”
The process came to closing Wednesday afternoon when Sapien, his parents, family and supporters arrived after school closed to finish the final installation and celebrate the accomplishment with a small potluck.
Despite the experiences and well-planned agenda, more delays poked through as Sapien and Barth discovered the anchoring bolts were of the wrong length, and got Dwayne Belmodis’ kokua in picking up replacement bolts.
Once done, the whirring of the mechanized drill heralded the end of the project as Sapien accepted a wet towel to wipe off any remaining dirt from the installation.
“You gotta have school spirit,” said Kamalani Kaui, one of the supporters who is an alumnus of Kapaa High School.
Sapien just smiled a smile of accomplishment.
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Dennis Fujimoto, staff writer and photographer, can be reached at 245-0453 or dfujimoto@thegardenisland.com.
